'Einstein on the beach' di Philip Glass e Bob Wilson: caratteri di una 'non-opera'

Abstract

Einstein on the beach, the opera Philip Glass wrote in collaboration with Bob Wilson in the mid-Seventies, can be viewed as a summa of the experiences generated by the Baltimore-born composer in the theatrical sphere from 1965 onwards. If we attempt an assessment of the work's dramaturgical structure, through a selection of reports and chronicles of the performances, we find structural elements that can be traced to the genre of 'melodrama' (which we know to have assumed innumerable forms in the 20th century), together with the inevitable differences of a historical, sociological and aesthetic nature. However, melodrama – at least as it was originally conceived – was a means of narration, its aim being to express, relate and project the story represented as clearly as possible. In Einstein the programmatic aim is diametrically the opposite, as its authors themselves declare at various times during the work's creation, and as the work itself confirms in performance. All possibility of narration is most definitely denied by the freezing of space (obtained by the extreme slowness of the gestures and the looming immobility of the images) and by the freezing of time (which is expanded by the way the music continually curls back on itself). What emerges, therefore, is a sort of new anti-dialectic, anti-narrative melodrama that makes no attempt to relate anything at all. Suspended in a kind of a-temporal stasis, it is a purely symbolic theatrical expression, conforming to the expressive demands of the minimalist current of the musical avant-garde of the second half of the 20th century.